Author Archives: alexander

[MacOS] XBox Media Center XMBC for OSX

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Yes it is true. The “XMBC on OS X” project maintains a version solely for OS X. It is running quite stable and look well known from my beloved XBox. It seems like the x264 implementation is a lot faster than the one inside VLC. But on the other hand XBMC has for instance issues with AAC 5.1 sounds. Means you need to transcode AAC5.1 to AC3. Rebooting to windows and using Zoom Player is faster I must admit…

Before reading on please do me the favor to answer this question:

Where do you come from?

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Thank you for participating.

id63_xbmc

However this project looks really promising. I wish the dev team all the best and encourage you guys reading here to donate some euros to the XBMC dev team. They really need it.

Project Page: Link here
Download: Link here

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[MacOS] Solutions to Issues with Leopard Graphics Update 10.5.2

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I got to know this issue for the first time when I installed a clean Leopard 10.5.1 to my HackMac and then upgraded like Netkas recommends. Since I remembered the old Tiger times and my bunch of problems with my x1650 ATI (read some hints for the ATI x1650 here), I decided to reinstall the system from the peek without applying the Graphics Update. And this way it works. The only thing that may happen: as long as you do not install the Graphics Update, further updates may not be shown in the update manager.

Because all that hazzle with the x1650 graphics I had, I decided to get a new card (ATI Radeon 2600HD XT – read how to install it).

Last week I decided to update my MacBook Pro aswell – which was still running on Tiger. See the way I did it here. Ad the funny thing in the end was… Ok I upgraded to 10.5.2, did the reboot thing and did the Graphics Update and… tatatata….

Description of the Issue

My MBP did not show me any login screen anymore. Instead I got a fixed mouse pointer in the upper left and a second mouse pointer that could be moved. But no windows or login possibilities. Before reading on what I did, please do me the favor and tell me:

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Solving this damn issue manually

I can’t exactly say what those Apple Devs thought by themselves when releasing this Graphics Update but the internet is full of articles where people tell this update f*cked their systems. Ok lets try some things…

  1. turn off your system
  2. turn on and hold the following keys to reset PRAM: "command","option", "P" and "R" (means 'Apple-Key' and 'Alt-Key' and 'p' and 'r')
  3. your system will do the well known startup “boom” sound again and reset itself.
  4. hold the keys until you heard the “boom” sound three times
  5. let the system try to boot
  6. if everything is fine now: open your windows and shout “Thank you Alexander”
  7. if booting still fails shout whatever you feel like
  8. then do the following:
  9. in case you don’t have a second partition with the full installation of Leopard on it, you can now ask yourself why you did not read this article before. Instead get your Leopard DVD at hand and reboot your system holding the “ALT” key and choose to boot from DVD. Those of you who yet have a second partition and followed the guide mentioned above do the same but choose the second partition to boot.
  10. click thru all the messy questions and
  11. start the “Disk Utility” then
  12. choose your harddrive where the screwed Leopard install is on
  13. and click “Repair Disk Permissions“
  14. wait forever for this task to complete (in my case it took about 25 minutes, I first thought it hangs but it did not…)
  15. reboot your system
  16. you should be done now

Additional notes:

The steps I performed above are intended to be applied to a system with genuine Apple hardware. This will not work on HackMac systems!!!

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[MacOS] Install Leopard from .dmg Image to your System

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“and first for something complete different”: Muzaq… coding or administrating system can’t do without gooood muzaq. Check our latest tunes here :-)

This time we’re gonna install Leopard from a .dmg image instead from DVD. The purpose is having a repair and recovery system by the hand in case you need it. My story is this: after having had a clean install of Leopard finished and having had applied all the updates, my MBP simply crashed again and again (two mouse pointers error – I found a solution in the meantime: that bug belongs to the Leopard Graphics Update – read it here howto fix it), since at that point I could not fix it, I then decided to reinstall. Something seemed fishy and would hopefully be gone after another fresh install. But as you expect: the same problem occurred again. I then decided to restore my previous tiger install and installed the Leopard DVD to a second partition. This way nothing can stop me, whereever I am, whatever does not work…

Ok what to do now?

I assume

  • You don’t have a bootcamp partition installed
  • means your harddrive is single partitioned
  • You got Tiger installed
  • You know the size of your harddrive (you can also find out in “Disk Utility”)

Now, let the game begin…

    1. Insert Leopard installation DVD into your drive
    2. Start “Disk Utility” to make a .dmg image of your installation DVD (see picture)
    3. click the Mac OS X Install DVD (highlight it) and choose New Image

 

beforedmg

  1. Choose Read as type of image and name it Mac OS X Install DVD(see picture)

    makedmg

  2. Wait forever (15-20minutes)
  3. Close Diskutility and
  4. Open terminal and enter:
    sudo diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 139G "HFS+" "LeoInst" 10G
    (in this example the total harddrive size is 149GB = “139G + 10G”)
  5. This command resizes the first partition to 139GB and generates a second partition formated in “HFS+” with size of 10GB. The name of the second partition will be LeoInst (disk0s1 is in this case the EFI partition – see here, what makes the EFI partition so interesting, system partition starts at disk0s2 – that’s the partition we’re gonna resize and split into disk0s2 and disk0s3)
  6. After having executed this command successfully you need to reboot
  7. After reboot open “Disk Utility” again
  8. You should now see two partitition on your harddrive (see picture)

    LeoInst

  9. Click on the second partition named “LeoInst”
  10. Click “Restore”
  11. As Source choose your Mac OS X Install DVD.dmg image (should be located on the desktop!)
  12. As destination drag and drop the second partition called “LeoInst”
  13. click “Restore”
  14. Wait about forever to have the DVD copied to your drive (again 15-20mins)

    diskutil01

  15. Close Disk Utility
  16. Go to “System Preferences” and choose “Startup Disk”
  17. Choose your Mac OS X Install DVD (which is in fact now a partition) as start volume
  18. reboot system and install Leopard

Additional notes

These instructions are intended to be applied to genuine Apple systems rather than HackMacs. In my case I used my MacBook Pro. Because of the different .kexts to be applied to HackMacs this guide will not work for those systems! Be warned!

[iPhone] T-Mobile’s iPhone Offer in Austria cheaper than in Germany

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german only

Dass das iPhone auch in Österreich von T-Mobile eingeführt wird, war gerüchteweise schon seit einiger Zeit bekannt. Nicht bekannt war, welche Tarife T-Mobile in Österreich anbieten würde. Traditionell ist Mobiltelefonieren in Österreich günstiger als in Deutschland und so ist es auch mit den Tarifen des iPhones. Laut Golem.de sehen die Tarife für Austria folgendermaßen aus:

[TABLE=2]

[MacOS] Enable and Disable Hibernation

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OSX supports real hibernation not only that sleep mode that costs electricity. It really supports it. But you gotta enable or disable it manually. So what to do:

  • open terminal window (I assume you’re logged in with your normal user account)
  • to disable hibernation, and enable standard sleep
    enter this: sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
  • to enable hibernation when closing the lid
    enter this: sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 1

Enjoy folks…

[MacOS] Change Time Machine’s Backup Intervalls

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We all know Time Machine is handy (at least since update 10.5.2 which fixed tons of issues). But one thing is not very handy: we usually cannot change the intervall of the backups. Before I will show you a simple solution please do me the favor to tell me:

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Do the following (I assume you’re logged in with your normal user account):

  • open terminal
  • for 30 minutes intervalls enter this:
    sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 1800
  • for 60 minutes intervalls (standard) enter this:
    sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 3600
  • for 6 hours intervalls enter this:
    sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 21600
  • for 12 hours intervalls enter this:
    sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 43200
  • and so on…

The simple formula is just a conversion from minutes or hours to seconds. Means: 1800 seconds = 30 minutes…
You can also go smack to the /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto file and edit it using a texteditor and change the StartInterval values. But I feel like the solution above might be faster… Kudos fly to mactricksandtips.com.

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[internal] Welcome people from around the world…

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As of today we got 2,000 unique visitors. This is one thing to be glad of. But the far more thing we xreally like: we are an international community. You are visiting this newz site from all the continents we got on planet earth:

Welcome Europe, Middle East, Africa, India, Asia, Australia and North and South America. Make yourself comfortable here and let me know if I can be of any help…

Kind regards from Berlin/Germany,

MetaPapa

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[iPhone] Convert Avi’s to iPhone mp4’s for free

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“and first for something complete different”: Muzaq… coding or administrating system can’t do without gooood muzaq. Check our latest tunes here :-)

english

Deutschsprachige Version weiter unten…

Sadly but the iPhone and the iPod Touch doesn’t understand a regular DivX, XviD or anything else in AVI containers. So if you don’t like commercial software either there is a very nice way using the VideoLanClient MediaPlayer. Follow these steps:

  1. Download VLC (link) for your platform and install it.
  2. start VLC Media Player
  3. click “File -> Open File” – a dialog pops up
  4. “Browse” to the file you wanna convert (see pic for reference)
  5. Enable “Streaming/Saving” and click on “Settings” – a new dialog pops up

    openfiledialog

  6. here you choose the name and folder of the then converted file (means: target filename and folder)
  7. choose “Encapsulation” as “mp4“
  8. choose “Video” as “mp4v”
  9. set video’s bitrate to “512 - 2048” kb/s (problems may occur above 2500 kb/s – btw: there is no need to convert an xvid with 800kb/s to mp4 with 2000kb/s. My experience says: 1024kb/s is way sufficient for the iPhone’s little display)
  10. choose “Audio” as “mp4a“
  11. set audio’s bitrate to “64 - 256” kb/s (I am really satisfied with 192kb/s but don’t hesitate to play with these configs)
    Window2en
  12. click “OK” ;-) – you will land in the first window again
  13. click here “OK" aswell
  14. transcoding will begin
  15. [Update] after transcoding you can start iTunes and import the movie into your iTunes’ movie database, then just sync it with your iPhone

Prolly some errors occur with dropped frames or something: you can almost forget them. So far I didn’t have any video that did not play properly on the iPhone…

This howto is based on notes by Tim Fick.

deutsch

See above for english language version…

Ok also für das Land der Filmfreunde eine kurze Übersetzung mit deutschen Bildern… Ihr kennt möglicherweise das Problem schon: das iPhone kann mit den allermeisten Eurer Videos nichts anfangen, außer mit diesem merkwürdigen .mp4 Format, mit dem sich Euer DVD Player oder das XBMC gar nicht gut vertragen. Das iPhone braucht also mal wieder eine Extrawurst und die lassen sich viele Hersteller von Konvertierungsprogrammen gerne ein wenig bezahlen. Im Folgenden findet Ihr allerdings eine Anleitung, bei der Ihr mit einem einzigen kostenlosen Tool (dem VideoLan Client) nach iPhone kompatiblem .mp4 konvertiert. Die Fotos sind von der Mac Version, der VLC sieht aber unter Windows (nahezu) identisch aus…

  1. VLC herunterladen (link) und installieren
  2. dann den VLC Media Player starten
  3. klick “Ablage -> Datei öffnen” (unter Windows wird das “Datei -> Datei öffnen sein”) und ein Dialogfenster wird sich öffnen
  4. “Durchsuchen“, um die zu konvertierende Datei auszuwählen (siehe Bild)
  5. Haken rein bei “Streamen/Sichern” and klick auf “Einstellungen” – und es öffnet sich ein neues Dialogfenster
    Window1dt
  6. hier wählt Ihr nun den Zielnamen und das Zielverzeichnis
  7. als “Verkapselungsmethode” (schon ein geiles Wort auf Deutsch, tsts…) nehmt Ihr “mp4“
  8. dann “Video” auf “mp4v” stellen
  9. und die Videobitrate zwischen “512 - 2048” kb/s festlegen (ab 2500 kb/s soll es wohl Probleme geben mit der Wiedergabe auf dem iPhone – aber es macht ohnehin keinen Sinn ein 800kb/s XViD nach 2000kb/s mp4 zu transkodieren. In meinen Fällen haben 1024kb/s für das Minidisplay the iPhones vollkommen ausgereicht und ich meine vollkommen ausgereicht)
  10. dann noch “Audio” auf “mp4a” stellen
  11. und die Audio Bitrate zwischen “64 - 256” kb/s festlegen (mir reichen 192kb/s vollkommen ;-)
    Window2dt
  12. dann auf “OK” klicken und Ihr landet wieder in dem ersten Dialogfenster
  13. hier dann auch einfach “OK" klicken
  14. und die Konvertierung beginnt
  15. [Update] nach der Konvertierung startet Ihr iTunes und importiert den Film in die lokale iTunes Filmdatenbank. Diese kann dann aufs iPhone synchronisiert werden.

Enjoy

[MultiPlatform] TrueCrypt 5.1 Update

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english

Only four weeks after the initial 5.0 release the TrueCrypt Team released version 5.1 of their encryption package. New and fixed features as follows:

  • Hybernation on encrypted system bootpartitions :-) Yeah!!!!
  • Mount encrypted system bootpartions from outside
  • Increased speed on AES volumes by 30%-90%
  • TrueCrypt bootloader is now compressed and is therefore smaller than before (27KB instead of 42KB)

Download here…

deutsch

Nach gerade mal vier Wochen hat das TrueCrypt Team das Update auf Version 5.1 veröffentlicht. Die wesentlichen Neuerung (und Bugfixes):

  • Hybernation funktioniert auch mit verschlüsselten Systempartitionen
  • Verschlüsselte Systempartitionen sind nun von außen mountbar (z.B. um Reparaturmaßnahmen durchzuführen)
  • Zugriffe auf AES verschlüsselte Partitionen sind um 30%-90% schneller
  • Der TrueCrypt Bootloader ist nun komprimiert und verbraucht nur noch 27KB statt 24

Zum Download hierlang …

[iPhone] Gomite.com announces GPS for the iPhone and iPod Touch

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The California based company Gomite.com today announced a GPS module for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. The iPhone and iPod Touch connect to the system called “locoGPS” via wlan and therefore may be used with other devices having wlan enabled aswell. The “locoGPS” module is only as large as a little box of matches and the battery will last for about 6 hours. It will be made available in summer 2008 and will cost about 100€.

Datentarif zu teuer? Für nur 0,09€/min gibt’s Datenverbindung via UMTS/GPRS beicallmobile…